WISE uses a solution from Sophos for anti-virus and a customized version of PrivateFirewall for its own firewall solution. You also get 2GB of online storage, which Webroot has secured from SOS Backup Online.

As well as offering a full range of protection WISE also incorporates a Gamer mode to ensure you can play games uninterrupted, e-mail scanning, access to your backups from any machine, and compatibility with Vista 64-bit editions.

Paul Lipman, senior vice president and general manager at Webroot said:

Home PC users face increasingly complex threats, both to their computers and their digital files. Many security suites fall short in their protection as they do nothing to secure the consumer’s irreplaceable files, and often include extraneous features that confuse users and can significantly slow down their PC’s performance … Webroot Internet Security Essentials delivers the critical components for protecting both a PC and the personal files it contains without slowing it down. And at a price below other major security suites, Webroot Internet Security Essentials delivers tremendous value to consumers in these challenging economic times.

The price for the package is US$59.95 with a 1-year license for use on up to 3 PCs and is available now.

Matthew’s Opinion
I used to use a range of products from different vendors to protect my machines, but at some point this became impractical mainly due to the price and incompatibilities between packages. The push from most vendors has been to offer an all-in-one solution, which benefits them because they can charge more, and us because we have a lot more protection with a single purchase.

Webroot seems to be coming to market late with this all-in-one solution, but with its respected SpySweeper application already well-known it should see good sales of WISE. The price is also good bringing it into the middle of the pack and with the bonus of 3 PCs covered under the license.

What it needs to do now is keep abreast of what other vendors are offering and match them in future versions in order to compete. By using Sophos and PrivateFirewall it has less to worry about in providing updated anti-virus and firewall protection, and should already excel is spyware and privacy protection.

Reader Comments

awesomeo

I used to really like and promote SpySweeper, but in recent times it has let me down. For a very long time, it failed to catch smitfraud and it’s variants. I don’t know if that has changed, but it was completely unacceptable for an anti-spyware program to ignore such a significant threat for so long. They also don’t offer 64 bit support yet, even though they have had plenty of time and most new PC’s are shipping with it.